Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Monday, August 23rd. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 39 minutes, setting at 8:34, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:56. The Moon, 1 day past full, will rise at 9:39 this evening.

The area of interest on the Moon for NASA’s Artemis crewed landing program and the target for Chinese lunar ambitions is the south pole, where signs of water ice have been detected in permanently shadowed craters. That is a valuable resource, if one wants to live off the land on the Moon. There’s another resource that is also valuable in finding: shelter from radiation and the Moon’s extreme temperature swings. Those are lava tubes. They are lava channels in which lava flowed, the top and sides cooled and crusted over. They emptied when the lava ran out, leaving a hollow tube. Sometimes part of the upper crust fails, leaving what is called a skylight. Several of these skylights have been found on the Moon and even Mars.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hr). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

A skylight betrays the presence of a lunar lava tube. Credit NASA/LRO.

Here’s an earthly lava tube on the Island of Hawai’i, I visited in 2012 with my wife. It was on the site of a coffee plantation south of Kona. Credit mine.